"Today I would remember you whom birth
brought no lucky dipFrom which to pluck a permanent privilege,And pain pushed prematurely into prose "

Birthday Poem for Clifford Sealy by George
Lamming

A strange animal, here was an individual in his late teens,
with no formal secondary education, attended neither Tranquillity
nor Queens Royal College, confident and forthright, clear
in his thinking, holding his own among the best of his time.
He was literally pulling himself up by his own bootstraps. Operation
Bootstrap began in Trinidad with called Clifford Sealy."
- Cecil Herbert

Poet, editor, playwright, political activist, short story writer,
founder of THE BOOK SHOP, he was one of the finest inspirational
figures to the literary and dramatic community in Trinidad and
Tobago.

His was not a privileged childhood. Clifford lived a varied
and intense life and was involved prior to 1950 in the radical
political and social movements of the time. He published in several
magazines and the daily press. He edited a paper called The
Forward, organised and addressed several political meetings.
Clifford was an active participant in the WHY-Not? Group, a group
of young radicals mainly from Queens Royal College, founded
by Lloyd and Edward Brathwaite. In the literary field Clifford
in 1948 with George Lamming and Cecil Herbert formed THE READERS
AND WRITERS GUILD. The Guild produced material in verse, short
story and drama. Several of his productions were aired on the
BBC.

The period to 1959 was spent in London where he produced two
unpublished novels, one of which was called The World of Her
Own. During the same period, he married Doreen Hamilton and
attended St. Lukes College, Exeter where he pursued studies
in Art and Divinity.

In 1959 Clifford returned to Trinidad and Started THE BOOK
SHOP. THE BOOK SHOP was the concretising of an aspiration he had
for the reading public of Trinidad and Tobago. He encouraged the
exposure of indigenous literature and made available literature
on a wide range of subjects. THE BOOK SHOP, in addition to ordering
the private libraries of many of us, provided also a Socratic
environment where the personality of Clifford Sealy was encountered.
There was a man, short in stature, erect in posture, with piercing
eyes who, if engaged, displayed aan uncanny precision in the use
of language. He was a master of the art of the dialectic and his
knowledge of history, politics, art, science and philosophy astounding.
Shiva Naipaul in Beyond the Dragons Mouth captures
graphically the nature of an encounter with THE BOOK SHOP:

"My new friend seemed to know something about everything.
It was he who introduced the word (polymath) into my vocabulary.
Our conversation  or, rather his conversation was wide-ranging
and studded with erudite reference

No matter what the subject  literary, scientific, philosophical,
political  he was never at a loss for something to say."

In the sixties and seventies Clifford was active in the literary
field. He edited a literary journal called Voices giving
voice to the works of young writers such as Roger Mc Tair, Victor
Questel, Barbara Jones, Wayne Browne, Anson Gonzalez, to name
a few. He was also Secretary of the Trinidad and Tobago Branch
of the international organisation for ports, playwrights, editors
and novelists, PEN. Several of his short stories and poems were
published in English, Canadian and West Indian journals. He was
an early contributor to BIM. In 1966 he won the BBC World Wide
Short Story Competition. His works can be found in collections
such as Breaklight, edited by A. Salkey (NY, 1973) and
Caribbean Medley, a collection of West Indian poetry.

Clifford also produced two plays. The Professor, a one
act social comedy, was performed by the Company of Players in
1967 in San Francisco both on stage and television. His second
play, Smell of Damp, a satire on middle class ways in Trinidad,
was staged by the Strolling Players in 1983.

Cliffords life was for those who encountered him a bridge
between the pure aspirations of the thirties and the responsibilities
of the present. He waxs a man who cared deeply for self and world,
exhibiting the intensity of a lovers concern for the beloved.
In his poem the Flame he inquires:

"Among this rout of faces is there one

With eyes of flint, reflecting stare that knows

The conflagration here can be undone

By water cataracting through a hose

The lovers flame lives longer than the sun

By tears in measured drop by drop it goes."

__________________________________________________

Excerpted from CSMF News, the newsletter of the John Clifford
Sealy Memorial Foundation, founded by Garth Alleyne et al.
The piece may be written by Garth Alleyne.